Beyond Reinventing the Payphone

Fundamentally as a species, we need things that can power our imagination, that can get our passions going, that gives us a sense of meaning. And that is not a brick, it is not a pipe. ItisanIdea.That's what drives Cities forward.— Edgar Pieterse

Rarely does one get a chance to influence something that our team believes will fundamentally change urban life in the 21st century.

Reinvent Payphones is one such chance.

When we reimagined the Payphone, we dared to dream big.

Smartphones were once expensive gadgets only accessible to a privileged few. They were clunky, expensive, mobile phones with some bells and whistles. If someone told you six years ago that today you could have a powerful computer in your pocket with high-speed internet, GPS, accelerometer, two cameras, retina display, artificial intelligence, and thousands of apps that also happens to make phone calls- you'd have called them crazy.

We believe that accessing and harnessing Open Data will bring the same amount of excitement and possibility to our daily lives. Just as the smart phone transformed from simply making phone calls on the go to fundamentally changing how we connect with our world, the reinvented payphone will drastically change city life for the better.